Four enemas and gruel: The birth of breakfast cereal

In the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg operated a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, a place where you would stay for a month or two and receive four enemas per day, three meals of thick gruel (a mixture of grains such as wheat, rye, barley, millet or corn), and other treatments to “cure” lumbago, rheumatism, or cancer. Kellogg also advocated a regimen of fresh air, exercise, hydrotherapy and a vegetarian diet that abstained from coffee, tea, alcohol, as well as sex. One day, while preparing a batch of gruel, Dr. Kellogg was called away, only to return hours later to find his gruel on the table, dry. Being frugal, he wondered if there was a way to salvage it; putting it through a roller, a light bulb of inspiration went off: flaked cereal. A guest staying at Kellogg’s sanitarium, C.W. Post, observed the corn flake-producing process. He promptly copied the process and founded the Post Cereal Company to sell Grape-nuts cereal. This prompted Kellogg’s brother, Will Keith Kellogg, to start a competing company to make flake cereal. The Kellogg brothers began with the Battle Creek Sanitarium Health Food Company in 1898 that later became the Kellogg Food Company. It required many years, but Kelloggs and Post persuaded Americans to replace their meat, eggs, sausage, and biscuits for breakfast with breakfast cereals. Sugar, then high-fructose corn syrup, became ubiquitous ingredients in cereals over time, not uncommonly compr...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Uncategorized blood sugar grain-free grains low-carb wheat belly Source Type: blogs